Saturday, December 3, 2011

WOOOOOO WOOOOOO! I'm not sure I'm alive, darlings. I mean, I'm sitting here typing but I'm not sure my heart has restarted - I may be dead and just don't know it. That's what I get for watching such a game!

WISCONSIN 42 - MICHIGAN STATE 39. WE WERE DOWN BY MORE THAN A TD AT HALF TIME...

BADGERS FANS HEADED TO PASADENA. We travel well, I can already here the local businesses rubbing their hands together going ahhhhhhh, Wisconsin fans. CHA CHING!

From jsonline.com (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel):

Updated: 10:54 p.m. | Montee Ball scored four touchdowns, including the go-ahead score with 3:45 left, as Wisconsim came back to beat Michigan State in the inaugural Big Ten championship game and earn a trip to the Rose Bowl.

Published: December 3, 2011

America has a new world champion, and he is only 8 years old.

The new titleholder, Awonder Liang of Wisconsin, tied for first in the under-8 section of the World Youth Chess Championship in Brazil, which ended last weekend. He took the gold medal on tie-breakers.

Awonder almost ran away from the field, winning his first seven games before drawing his eighth and then losing in the last round.

He was not the only American to medal. In the under-10 section, Ruifeng Li of Texas took the silver, also on tie-breakers. And in the girls’ under-14 group, Sarah Chiang, another Texan, narrowly missed out on the bronze medal when she tied for third. But under the tie-breaker scoring system, she finished fourth.

One of Awonder’s best games was in Round 5, when he beat Matvey Pak of Russia. Awonder played patiently to win a pawn and then milked his advantage in a rook-and-pawn endgame.

Donation will help squad attend national championship in San Diego

A nationally renowned Brooklyn middle school chess club threatened by budget cuts has been rescued by a white knight — in the form of a local power company.

Officials for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration Plant donated $25,000 to Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg to help fund the school’s chess program.

“It’s like a dream come true that someone responded to our cry for help,” said assistant principal and team coordinator John Galvin.

After a rash of budget cuts and a lean economy, Galvin said the school had a daunting task of raising $60,000 to help their students trek across the country to compete for a national championship. Faculty at the school and the chess champs have been working overtime to raise the money by selling candy bars, running bake sales and reaching out to private donors.

Even though they’ve raised a good chunk of the money, Galvin still feared the deficit would be too much — especially with the team’s big trip to San Diego, to challenge for another national title, looming in April.

“Either the price would have been too high or we would have been unable to take all the students who earned the right to go,” said Galvin. “That was a dilemma that we were extremely fearful of.”

Officials for the power company said they called Galvin yesterday after they read the story in Thursday’s Daily News.

“We thought, ‘Three weeks before Christmas, what perfect timing,’ ” said company official Sean Lane. “It just seemed to us how could we not support this school.”

Lane said the company regularly donates their time to the school and when they saw the school needed cash, the decision was a no-brainer.

“We rely on New York to be successful so that we can be successful and that starts with the kids in our own community,” said Lane. “It’s a way for us to give back to the community we work in every day.”

Galvin said even though the team is still $15,000 short, he can now focus on getting his kids in prime position to checkmate the competition.

The team spent yesterday at Google’s offices in Chelsea wiping the floor with the search engine’s best and brightest on the chess board, cruising to an easy 45-9 win.

“It just reinforced our belief that our kids are the intellectual equals of anyone,” said Galvin. “They’re proud of what they’ve accomplished and they’re proud to show it off.”

Her opponent, a news photographer, never stood a chance.
The Palmdale second-grader is a national chess champion, dominating the K-3
age group in the prestigious Susan Polgar World Open for Boys and Girls in 2010
and 2011.

She placed third in 2009, her first year of competition. She's also the youngest in the country to win a high school tournament at age
6.
The previous record-holder was a 7-year-old boy in 1987 - who happens to be
her half-brother.

"It doesn't matter how old you are," Gia said on a recent afternoon.
"I can think up to 11 moves in advance."

During the last World Open, held near Chicago in October, she beat a rival
whose coaches were both grand masters.
The match lasted no more than half an hour. The year before, Gia took home a
grand prize that included a college scholarship.

Her father celebrated the feat.
"Gia has talked about becoming a doctor," said Richard Peterson, a former
financial analyst and chess tutor who became disabled in 2003 after sustaining a
brain injury when a trailer collapsed on him.

"In no way is chess the goal - it is just a tool for the kids to get to where
they really want to go," Peterson added. "It trains their minds, gives them
critical thinking skills, and that's something that's simply not taught in
school."

Gia's siblings - 12-year-old Michail, 10-year-old Dante, and 6-year-old
Jayani - also are accomplished players, even though the youngest is still
learning how to read and write. They also have a half-brother and a half-sister,
both adults who were national champions in their youth. All four of them won trophies during a scholastic chess tournament in
Ridgecrest, Kern County, last month. Their combined record: 19-0.

"Chess is fun," said Dante, a three-time regional champion in his age group,
whose signature strategy involves taking over the space in a chessboard until
his opponent has nowhere to go.

Dwight Morgan, who has organized children's chess tournaments in Ridgecrest
for 40 years, considers the Peterson kids - particularly Gia and Dante - among
the best he's seen at their age.

"A couple of tournaments ago, Gia won the high school section and bested boys
and girls from ninth grade through 12th grade," he said. "It was quite something
to see these tall kids, 13 to 18 years old, holding small trophies while the
petite Gia, who was only 8, had the biggest trophy of them all."
"To see a young girl doing so well is really great for the sport as far as encouraging other girls," he added, noting boys have tended
to dominate the game.

Gia and Dante are the most competitive in the family. They partnered once and
outscored rival teams with four players each.
It was Dante who brought chess back into the household after his father's
accident.

"I didn't want to play chess because the pain was just awful," Richard
Peterson said. "Whenever I tried to concentrate, it would make my head throb."

Dante, then a kindergartner, pursued his chess passion on his own and
eventually "dragged" his mother, Deepika, to local tournaments. Soon, she was
taking the rest of the children as well.
"Dante really wanted to go, but I remember when (then preschooler) Gia first
sat down to play, she was so scared of all the people around her that she
started crying," Deepika said.

The owner of a trophy-making business, Deepika tried to comfort the children
if they got upset after a loss by telling them, "If you want a trophy, I'll make
you one."

She never actually resorted to creating those consolation prizes though,
because the children soon started winning regularly.
They honed their chess skills by reading books, solving problems on an
educational CD, and competing online with adults.
Despite all that, the children are well-rounded, getting A's at school and
playing tag and other activities with their peers.

Their family room has a huge collection of trophies and medals in one corner.
More awards are stored in boxes inside the garage.

Peterson, who began to recover from his brain injury in 2008, hopes those
accomplishments will ensure a bright future for the children, though he hopes
the game will not be the sole pursuit of their adult lives.
"We want chess to be an avenue to other things," he said.

************************************************

Well, I know that's a practical approach but if these kids are that talented perhaps they could rise to the top of the world rankings. I hate to see talent cut off for practical considerations; unfortunately, that's the state of chess in the USA today. There's just not enough opportunity to make a decent living playing chess to make it worthwhile to pursue as a full time career. Sad sad sad.

OH CRAP. Michigan State scored another TD at the start of the second quarter, Wisconsin now leads by 1 TD, assuming Michigan States makes the point-after.

It's been one of those days! Trip to the supermarket in the rain (thank Goddess for that bright yellow hooded rain coat!) at 9 a.m., family tree work (BIG project that must be ready soon for assembly and copying for family for Christmas) until 3:30 p.m., laundry, housework -- the living room has now been vacuumed and dusted, the furniture rearranged awaiting placement of the Christmas tree. I was just too tired to lug it out of the garage tonight. That sucker is HEAVY, even in two parts! Then I'll have to crawl around inside it (no doubt battling spiders along the way) in order to reconnect the inner sockets for the lights.

And, as every good Christmas tree decorator knows, arranging the branches before hand 'just so' takes nearly as much time as decorating the thing!

This year I'm going to try the French ribbon look - bought 120 yards of the stuff and if it's not enough, too bad. This year will also see a proper tree topper for the first time -- bought two very large brass stars that will be wired to the top most branch and voila, topper! This is how I would like my tree to look - now whether I can pull it off -- who knows?

Still need to do more dusting and polishing, furniture is looking dull; and the baseboards need to be wiped down, the glass on the curio and book cabinets cleaned, and the furniture vacuumed. But now the game is coming on...

...and the red, green and blue light bulbs are now in the living room lamps, lending a festive air, I've set extra candles out and the white lights around the perimeter of the big arch-top window are on!

Badgers are odds favored to win this game, so I understand - by 10 points? Well, that is what it was last night, at any rate :) I don't bet, I just watch, scream and yell.

JUMPING UP AND DOWN SCREAMING - SCORE SCORE SCORE! TD WISCONSIN!

OH CRAP, MICHIGAN JUST SCORED A TD. On a good note, we already sacked their quarterback once, ha ha! And we're getting the ball back after the commercial break (now 7:40 p.m.)...

A NORTH EUROPEAN TURNED BONE CHESS SET EARLY 19TH CENTURY One side stained black, the knight as a horse's head and rook as a castle turretThe king -- 3½ in. (9 cm.) highThe pawn -- 2 in. (5 cm.) highWith a Victorian rosewood and marquetry box (32)

Even the most hardened soldier can escape grievous wounds on the battlefield
only to suffer deeply painful psychological traumas after returning home. And
unfortunately, the same pattern of psychic trauma seems to apply for the dogs
that help provide essential services for military men and women.

The relationship between military dogs and the service members who own them
is a complex one. In fact, as recently as March, the military was highlighting
the use of dogs to help treat human soldiers suffering from PTSD.

The study of canine PTSD is only about 18 months old, Dao reports, even
though animal behavior has been studied for centuries:

Like humans with the analogous disorder, different dogs show different
symptoms. Some become hyper-vigilant. Others avoid buildings or work areas that
they had previously been comfortable in. Some undergo sharp changes in
temperament, becoming unusually aggressive with their handlers, or clingy and
timid. Most crucially, many stop doing the tasks they were trained to
perform.

"If the dog is trained to find improvised explosives and it looks like it's
working, but isn't, it's not just the dog that's at risk," said Dr. Walter F.
Burghardt Jr., chief of behavioral medicine at the Daniel E. Holland Military
Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base "This is a human health issue
as well."

Military dogs have reportedly become the most effective tool for detecting
improvised explosive devices (IED's) in the battlefield. IED's are typically
composed of chemicals, rather than metals--which makes them especially hard to
detect via conventional electronic monitoring systems.

And as Dao goes on to explain, testing the dogs for PTSD is a complex
process:

In a series of videos that Dr. Burghardt uses to train veterinarians to spot
canine PTSD, one shepherd barks wildly at the sound of gunfire that it had once
tolerated in silence. Another can be seen confidently inspecting the interior of
cars but then refusing to go inside a bus or a building. Another sits listlessly
on a barrier wall, then after finally responding to its handler's summons, runs
away from a group of Afghan soldiers.

Once a military dog is diagnosed with PTSD, Dr. Burghardt works directly with
veterinarians on treatment:

Since the patient cannot explain what is wrong, veterinarians and handlers
must make educated guesses about the traumatizing events. Care can be as simple
as taking a dog off patrol and giving it lots of exercise, play time and gentle
obedience training.
More serious cases will receive what Dr. Burghardt calls "desensitization
counter-conditioning," which entails exposing the dog at a safe distance to a
sight or sound that might trigger a reaction—a gunshot, a loud bang or a
vehicle, for instance. If the dog does not react, it is rewarded, and the
trigger—"the spider in a glass box," Dr. Burghardt calls it—is moved
progressively closer until the dog is comfortable with it.

Some dogs are even treated
with the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. That regimen permits them not merely to
recover from their trauma, experts say--it also helps them eventually return to
active duty. Those dogs unable to re-enlist are allowed to retire, either with
an adoptive family or an inactive service member.

HOW THE FLYING F CAN A DOG 'RE-ENLIST?' AS IF IT'S VOLUNTARY ON THE DOG'S PART?

Nature | News

Geneticists, archaeologists and historians are joining forces to investigate the history of transatlantic slavery, in a €4.3-million (US$5.8-million) project launched today. The researchers say that the project is a unique opportunity to improve our knowledge of the slave trade, but warn that some of their results might be “uncomfortable”.

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, millions of people from west and central Africa were captured [abducted] and shipped across the Atlantic by European slave traders to a life of forced labour in the Americas. The subject has been well studied by historians, but one of the coordinators of the project, geneticist Hannes Schroeder of the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, says that there are still “large gaps in our knowledge” regarding the origins of the people captured as slaves, for instance, and how the slave trade operated.

“The historical records are fragmentary,” he says. “For example, they tend to mention just the port of export, rather than the ethnic or geographical origin of the person. The idea is that by bringing in genetics, we get a different view.”

Schroeder got the idea for the collaboration after studying isotopes of strontium, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the bones and teeth of slaves buried at the Newton plantation in southern Barbados. Archaeologists were keen to find a method to distinguish between first-generation captives and individuals who were subsequently born on the island, and to relate that to ancient African cultural practices such as filing teeth or burying grave goods with bodies.

Of 25 individuals studied, Schroeder showed that 7 were first-generation captives born in Africa, including one who had made the Atlantic crossing as a child1.

Schroeder was subsequently keen to use DNA to pin down the ethnic origins of slaves to particular regions within Africa, and to bring together researchers of different disciplines. The resulting project, called EUROTAST (for Europe and Trans Atlantic Slave Trade), is funded by a grant from the European Union’s Marie Curie network, and will support 15 researchers at 10 institutions in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Iceland.

Ancient origins

Bioarchaeologists at institutions including the universities of Bristol and York, UK, will study the skeletal remains of enslaved Africans to investigate their demographics, health and quality of life, and use protein and isotope analysis to gain information about geographical origins and identify diseases such as scurvy and tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, historians at the University of Hull, UK, will compile and study written sources on the origins of African captives, and archaeologists based at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands will map and excavate plantations and slave villages in the Dutch Antilles.

But a large focus is on genetics. Several groups will study the DNA of modern populations, such as the Noir Marron people in French Guiana, to reconstruct the origins of Africans captured as slaves. The Noir Marron are direct descendants of slaves who escaped their Dutch masters during the era of plantation slavery, and have since interbred very little with other populations.

Researchers at the Center for GeoGenetics will study ancient DNA from enslaved Africans buried in the Caribbean, using more than 300,000 genetic markers on the nuclear genome. These are called ancestry informative markers2, and will help to distinguish between people from different populations in West Africa.

Matthew Collins, a bioarchaeologist at the University of York, who will lead one of the projects, says that EUROTAST may reveal controversial findings. These could include, for example, the extent of interbreeding with native Americans and Europeans among US populations who see themselves as purely African, and the role of African people in the slave trade.

“I think it’s going to be a very uncomfortable project,” he says. “It’s going to come out with some things that people don’t want to hear, but that’s one of the things that’s interesting about it.”

Because of this, the researchers plan to discuss their work with involved communities ahead of announcing the results.

Reviled by generations of archaeologists as a pillager and plunderer of antiquities (and Schliemann and Woolley weren't???), a new biography of explorer/amateur archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni attempts a balanced view of the man and the times in which he lived.

In the Egyptian gallery of London's British Museum stands a 3,400-year-old
statue carved from polished black stone. Lifted from the city of Thebes, the
figure depicts Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from about 1386 B.C. to 1350 B.C.,
when the kingdom was at the peak of its power and prosperity. Sitting erect but
serene, his hands resting on his thighs, Amenhotep seems every inch the pharaoh.
But one detail disturbs the regal impression: Beside the king's left foot, with
all the subtlety of a Times Square billboard, appears the crudely carved name
"Belzoni." How this Italian commoner came to be forever linked with an Egyptian
pharaoh is now the subject of a lively, witty biography by Ivor Noël Hume.

Belzoni

By Ivor Noël Hume(University of Virginia Press, 301 pages,
$34.95)

Though Giovanni Battista Belzoni is not generally recalled today, he is still
infamous among archaeologists. Born in 1778 in Padua, Italy, Giovanni worked in
his father's barbershop until age 16, then left to study in Rome. After Napoleon
Bonaparte captured the Eternal City in 1797, Belzoni wandered Europe for a time,
ending up in London, where he hoped to secure work as a hydraulic engineer. But
the only job the 6-foot-6 Italian could find was as a circus performer, billed
as "the Patagonian Sampson" and toting a dozen lesser men about the stage.

For more than a decade, Belzoni barnstormed Britain and the Continent, yet
always longed to make his mark in a respectable calling. On the island of Malta
he met an agent of Egypt's ruler Mohammed Ali Pasha, who hired him to design an
irrigation system to distribute the waters of the Nile. With his Irish wife,
Sarah, Belzoni arrived in Alexandria in June 1815. But when his waterworks
failed to impress, the Belzonis found themselves broke and far from home.

Then Giovanni met Henry Salt, England's new consul general to Egypt. Eager to
curry favor with British aristocrats, who coveted the Egyptian antiquities that
Napoleon had made fashionable, Salt hired Belzoni to provide the goods. The
Italian took to the work with the mercenary zeal of a true showman and over the
next three years dashed up and down the Nile, sifting sand, opening tombs,
raising fallen colossi, and scooping up anything transportable and marketable.

Belzoni didn't have the pharaonic fields to himself, however. His great rival
in looting was another Italian, Bernardino Drovetti, the former French consul
general, whose clients included the Louvre museum. Though their competition was
usually limited to dirty tricks and subterfuge, the shenanigans occasionally
flared into something more pointed, as when pistols were drawn over sacking
rights to an obelisk from the island of Philae. (Belzoni prevailed.) To
eliminate any question of ownership, Belzoni and Henry Salt took to incising
their names directly on the relics.

But the collaborators quarreled often and long about expenses, the rights to
the loot and credit for their discoveries. By 1819, Belzoni was fed up; he and
the long-suffering Sarah returned to England. He had excavated the fabulous tomb
of Seti I at Abydos, and in London he hoped to exhibit a reproduction of the
sepulcher. But he failed to pry Seti's sarcophagus away from Salt and the
British Museum, and without that showpiece his exhibit failed to attract the
hoped-for crowds. Belzoni's memoir sold briskly, though, and in London he was
celebrated as an illustrious explorer and even "the Great Belzoni." To his
bitter disappointment, however, his lower-class origin, Italian nativity, circus
experience and patently mercenary attitude meant that he could never be accepted
by English society as a gentleman scholar.

Later generations were even harder on Belzoni. In the 19th century, as
archaeology began to mature into a more rigorous, respectable endeavor, his
smash-and-grab methods were abhorred; he was decried by the president of the
Archaeological Association of America as "the greatest plunderer of them all"
and by a writer for the National Geographic Society as "the most notorious tomb
robber Egypt has ever known."

Biographer Ivor Noël Hume hopes to rehabilitate Belzoni's reputation. The
"Great Explorer," he argues, was no worse than his contemporaries or his
predecessors. The looting of Egyptian tombs and temples was already rife in
ancient Greek times, and the Egyptians themselves were eager accomplices (for a
price) in the sacking of their cultural heritage. Into the 20th century,
tourists could still buy antiquities directly from Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

As for Belzoni, Mr. Hume says, "he was only doing his job." In that
laissez-faire era, "there were no archaeological purists looking over his
shoulder. All that mattered was finding something exciting." If there is blame
to be ascribed, Mr. Hume suggests that it be cast on Belzoni's employer, Henry
Salt, and on Salt's wealthy patrons, who craved Egyptian objets to
display at their country estates and in the august institutions on whose boards
they sat, especially the British Museum, which purchased many of Belzoni's
discoveries.

Despite Belzoni's unsavory reputation, the author says, he "showed more
serious interest in the context of the tombs and temples" than others of his
time. Mr. Hume, former director of excavations at Jamestown, Va., goes so far as
to argue that Belzoni was "a bona fide archaeologist." Others may find that
claim extreme, since the beginning of Egyptian archaeology is usually traced to
about 1850, when Frenchman Auguste Mariette, the founder of Egypt's first
national museum, began to preach the gospel of conservation. And some may not be
so quick to forgive the desecration of Egypt's patrimony. Still, in this
entertaining and graceful account of Belzoni's adventures, Mr. Hume opens a
window on the raffish days of early Egyptology, when an Italian giant towered
over his competitors.

Mr. Helferich is the author of "Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost
Jade of the Maya," just published by Lyons Press.

It breaks my heart that the kids of IS 318's chess program have to face this - and not just them. Chess programs all across the country are suffering because of massive budget cuts. These are championship calibre teams too. How sad, and pathetic. We've got plenty of money to pay New Gingrich over a million dollars of taxpayer money in "consultation fees" to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. How many school chess programs would that money fund - please do the math.

A Brooklyn middle school’s championship chess team is trying to avoid being checkmated by budget cuts.

Students and faculty at Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg are frantically trying to raise as much cash as they can to keep funding their top-shelf chess team.

School officials said budget cuts and the economic slide have made it nearly impossible to make ends meet. “It’s kind of like a double whammy,” said Assistant Principal and chess team organizer John Galvin. “We don’t have the money and \[parents\] don’t have the money, but somehow we’ve got to make it happen.”

Galvin said he was able to use school funds to run the $100,000 program, which boasts 28 national championships, before the cuts started in 2008. Now, administrators need to come up with at least $60,000 to cover the costs.

Nicholas Fevelo for News

Yuxin Zhou plays chess at Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Wednesday. Her championship-winning team is struggling to raise funds to attend competitions.

Student chess players have already raised $12,000 from selling chocolate bars, and administrators were able to scrape together an extra $10,000 from private donations. Money has gotten so tight for the team that Galvin said he ran up an $8,000 tab on his credit card two weeks ago covering the team’s hotel and airfare on a trip to Dallas for a national competition. The team won in the eighth-grade division.

Galvin, who said he’ll be reimbursed from the fund-raising, said the chess program is important for his students who come from poor families. “The premise of the team is that if you work hard and you study, you can be the intellectual equal of any kid in the U.S.,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what language you speak — no one has an advantage when you sit across the board.”

Seventh-grader Shanniah Wright said she’s sad the team cut back on its local competitions. “I don’t get as much practice playing different people as I would like,” said Shanniah. “I could get better at chess before the nationals.”

“It makes me a little sad that I can’t do that,” said eighth-grader Isaac Barayev, 13. “You miss out on the experience and the fun of playing chess.”

Galvin said his chess team has bigger things to worry about than team finances.

The team is visiting Google’s Chelsea office to push around the firm’s executives on the chess board Thursday, and in the spring, it will be matching wits with students from Columbia University and NYU.

In April, the team heads to San Diego for the National Junior High School Championship. Meanwhile, the team is also the subject of the forthcoming documentary “Brooklyn Castle.”

“I don’t want the kids to worry about how they are going to afford the trip,” Galvin said. “I want them to worry about being good students and great chess players.”

Invisible writes in with the news that the Lewis Chessmen are about to go on exhibition in New York. And Beach took this as a prompt for one of his favourite archaeological stories. The unnamed Lewis farmer in the following account was one Malcolm ‘Sprot’ Macleod.

In 1831 a high tide on the coast near Uig in the Isle of Lewis washed away a sand-bank and exposed a cave in which there as a small beehive-shaped building rather like the little domestic grinding querns to be found in the Highlands. A labourer working near found it, and, thinking it might contain some treasure, broke into it. He found a cache of eighty-four carved chessmen ranged together. They had an uncanny look, and he flung down his spade and ran, convinced that he had come on a sleeping company of fairies.

[In] the narrative above, from the great Katharine Briggs, continues with poor Malcolm being sent back to get the chessmen by his furious wife.The greater part of them [67 of 78] are now in the British museum. Replicas have been made of them, but the originals, all mustered together, are much more impressive. A tradition has risen about them. It is said that the guards who take the guard-dogs round at night cannot get them to pass the Celtic [sic] chessmen. They bristle and drag back on their haunches. So perhaps the Highlander’s superstition can be excused.

The chess pieces are actually Norse in origin and were probably made in Scandinavia, quite possibly in Norway, which ruled the Western Isles at this time. But in Gaelic legends chess games between mortals and fairies are a commonplace, perhaps because chess was seen as a ‘game of kings’.

As to those poor dogs, Katharine Briggs is always reliable and she will certainly have come across this tale in her endless fairy hunting. It remains to be seen though whether it is just third-hand London rumour or a folk belief from the staff of the British Museum itself.

************************************

I don't know who Katharine Briggs is -- but I too, wonder if there is anything more to the intriguing notion that the pieces might be "haunted." It seems plausible to me that a simple laborer coming across the wondrously carved pieces for the first time, with those large bulging, staring eyes of theirs, might have been a little spooked by the sight of all of them lying there, seeming to stare right at him! In the 1830s, away from the big cities, the legends of the land would still have been close in the hearts of the local people. Who knows - perhaps the laborer at first mistook the pieces for fairies themselves -- you know, "The Wee Little People"...

I looked through what resources I have in my library, but there was no mention direct mention of the "laborer" discovering the pieces and running away because they frightened him! Indeed, accounts I've read online generally say that there is no report of how the pieces were first discovered other than the well known "facts" (the location of the discovery and the interesting fact that they were evidently "buried" in a sort of oven or stone cache of one sort or other). But - read on for yourself, and check out Note 8 at the very end.

I did find some information about how the pieces first came to the attention of the public, in H.J.R. Murray's "A History of Chess" (pages 758-762, including hand-drawn illustrations of some of the pieces in the British Museum):

The Lewis chessmen were discovered in 1831 in a sand-bank at the head of the Bay of Uig, on the west coast of the island of Lewis, one of the outer Hebrides. There is no circumstantial account of the discovery, but it appears that they were found in a small chamber of dry-built stone, resembling an oven, about 15 feet below the top of the sand-bank. The chessmen were exhibited by Mr. Roderick Ririe at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, April 11, 1831, but before the members had raised the money to purchase them Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe stepped in and bought 10 of the pieces, while the remaining 67 chessmen, 14 tablemen, and a buckle were bought for the British Museum. On the dispersion of Mr. Sharpe's collection, the Lewis chessmen, now 11 in number, Mr. Sharpe having obtained another one from Lewis, were purchased by Lord Londesborough, and at the sale of the latter's collection in 1888 they were purchased by the Society of Antiquaries for the Scottish National Museum. All the game-pieces, as well as the buckle, are carved of walrus-ivory. The 78 chessmen comprise 8 Kings, 8 Queens, 16 Bishops, 15 Knights, 12 Rooks, and 19 Pawns, of which 2 Kings, 3 Queens, 3 Bishops, a Knight, and 2 Rooks are now at Edinburgh. The Kings and Queens are carved seated, the Kings holding a half-drawn sword across the knees, the Queens usually resting the head on the right hand. Seven of the Bishops (2 at Edinburgh) are also seated, the other 9 are standing. All are represented with the crozier. The Knights are on horseback with spear in the right ahnd and shield on the left arm. The Rooks are armed warriors on foot, with helmet, shield, and sword. The Pawns are of various shapes and sizes, but most have octagonal bases. Two of them bear some ornamentation. A Queen of the same type as the Lewis Queens was found in County Meath, Ireland, in the first half of the 19th century. It is now in a private museum in Dublin.(7)

Sir Frederick Madden, in his Historical Remarks (Archaeologia, 1852, xxiv; also separately printed, and in CPC., i), endeavoured to prove that these pieces are of Icelandic carving of the middle of the 12th century. The latest authority, Mr. O.M. Dalton (Cat. Ivory Carvings . . . in the B. Mus., London, 1909), ascribes them to the 12th century, and thinks that they may be of British carving. Wilson had already claimed a Scotch origin for them. Both views depend upon the assumption that the chessmen are as old as the 13th century.

If there were any truth in the tradition which Capt. Thomas discovered to be current in Lewis, they may be the work of Icelandic carvers of the beginning of the 17th century only.(8)

(8) The tradition is to the effect that a shepherd employed by George Mor Mackenzie (who settled in Lewis, 1614-15) murdered a sailor, who had swum ashore from a wreck with the chessmen in a bag. The shepherd buried the bag in the sand, and never prospered afterwards. Capt. F. and W. L. Thomas, in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotl., 1863, iv. 411. In addition to the works already mentioned, information respecting the Lewis chessmen is also contained in Wilson, Prehis. Annals Scotl., ii 341; and Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotl., 1889, xxiii. 9.

********************************************

This is some good stuff!
A possible murder connected to the Lewis chess pieces? Now that could be a capital haunting, indeed!

Imagine this: what if the story is true; or at the least, a mangled version of the story (regardless of its truth) is talked about for years around the islands, enough so that it has passed into general folklore after some years (we don't know when the shipwreck occurred or when the murder of the sailor took place). Given this background, in addition to an enduring belief in hauntings and ghosts and, of course, the Wee Little People, the laborer's reaction might not seem so silly to our modern eyes if he knew that tale of a long-ago murder and the burying of the unfortunate sailor's bagful of goodies...

Woooooooo, sends chills down my spine, I have to say!

*************************************************

I don't recall coming across in any of the accounts I've read about how the Lewis chess pieces ended up where they did the information contained in Murray's account. Much more fascinating reading than bare-bones reports that the British Museum acquired 67 pieces and the National Museum of Scotland acquired the other 11 pieces!

Here's the line of "descent" of the pieces after they surfaced -- no indication, unfortunately, of whether they were held for a period of time after their discovery before being sold to Mr. Roderick Ririe, or when he may have acquired them, or what he paid for them. It is quite possible, of course, that Ririe was not the original purchaser, but as he exhibited the pieces at the Antiquarian Society I am assuming that he must have been an avid antiquities collector and I assume he may have been the first buyer. How he came to know about the pieces, however, now that is something not known either. Arghhh!

3. Ririe sells 67 pieces, 14 "tablemen" and one belt buckle to the British Museum.

4. Kirkpatrick Sharpe acquires another Lewis piece - but it is not described how, or how the piece was identified as belonging to the Lewis cache. In any event, either Sharpe or someone on his behalf or on behalf of his Estate sells 11 Lewis pieces to Lord Londesborough.

5. In 1888 the Society of Antiquaries acquires the 11 Sharpe pieces for the Scottish National Museum.

It appears at least some record of these transactions were kept -- else Murray couldn't have tracked down the information he provided in his History of Chess! Didn't 'gentlemen' of the period nearly always write diaries and letters and what not? Was nothing from their records saved that can be dug around in today that might contain further information or clues? Inventories? Estate records? Attorneys' records? Bills of Sale? We know that the pieces passed through the hands of at least three gentlemen: (1) Ririe; (2) Sharpe; (3) Lord Londesborough.

And what of Capt. Thomas? Who was he, and why was he interested in the Lewis chess pieces? How did he track down the old story about the shepherd murdering the sailor and burying the contents of the sailor's sack? What, exactly, were the contents of the sailor's sack? It is assumed it was the Lewis chess pieces but - how do we really know...

And why would the local people have been willing to talk to him? We've all read tales from all over the world about how notoriously closed-mouth villagers are when it comes to outsiders - whether a thousand years ago or today. So how did the Captain sniff out the murder story?

I do love a mystery, but I don't know if I have the time or resources to try and explore this any further. Like the blogger who reported the original "haunted pieces" story (see above, from strangehistory.net) , I'm wondering if anyone out there has any information on this?

In the 2001 film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry and his pal
Ron play a Christmastide game of "wizard chess" in the bedecked Great Hall of
Hogwarts. To many film lovers the chess pieces' gnomelike appearance would seem
another example of the film's masterly art direction. But connoisseurs of
antique chess sets recognize the pieces as copies of what is arguably the most
famous chess set of all, the 12th-century Lewis chessmen.
Eighty-two Lewis chessmen reside in the British Museum, which purchased them
between 1831 and 1832 (an additional 11 pieces are owned by the National Gallery
of Scotland). The tangled history of this doughty little army—selections from
which are currently on exhibition at the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art's medieval treasury in upper Manhattan—is worthy of a Wilkie Collins
mystery.

According to the illustrated essay accompanying the exhibition, by the British
Museum's curator of late medieval collections, James Robinson, they were part of
a hoard of luxury goods unearthed in 1831 in a sandbank along Uig Bay, on the
west coast of the windswept Isle of Lewis, largest of the Outer Hebrides west of
Scotland. Suffice it to say that the Lewis chessmen eventually arrived at the
British Museum via a chain of avarice, sharp dealings and, happily, dedicated
scholarship.

Soon after the discovery, stylistic inspection revealed that the multiple
kings, queens, bishops and other pieces in the hoard represented pieces from at
least four distinct but incomplete sets. Stylistic similarities to
contemporaneous church sculpture point specifically to the Norwegian city of
Trondheim.
"These pieces represent the highest class of society," observes Mr. Robinson
as we examine them together at the Cloisters. "And though they were by tradition
thought to have been a merchant's hoard, they may well have been made for a
Medieval Norwegian king and presented by him to one of his ambassadors as part
of the wealth they were supposed to display, symbolic of their sovereign's
power."
Chess, which originated in sixth-century India and came to Europe by way of
Persia and the Islamic lands, was truly the game of kings. Sovereigns and their
courtiers played chess not only for amusement, but to exercise their skill at
military strategy in an age when might often made right.
Medieval European chessmen were fashioned from various precious materials,
but virtually every one of the Lewis chessmen is a masterpiece ivory sculpture
in miniature. Tough, though prone to splitting when worked or stored near heat,
ivory has a satisfying heft when held, and can be polished to a buttery sheen.
These animated little warriors were hand-carved using a variety of knives, saws,
files and drills. Moreover the Lewis chessmen are distinctive because most are
made of walrus ivory, a characteristic medium of maritime North Europe. Walrus
tusks are much smaller than African elephant tusks, which dictates the size of
objects carved from it. Walrus is also more yellow in color than elephant ivory,
and because the smooth outer layer is also thinner than elephant ivory, carving
often exposes the darker pulp beneath. Exposed pulp is often kept in less
prominent places on the Lewis figures—under a carved fold of a costume, for
instance—which shows how skillfully the anonymous craftsmen planned the carving
of each piece.
That carving itself is distinctive, especially in its visual strength. As
chess is an abstract battle, so the chessmen, especially the pawns, are carved
as lively abstractions of human figures. Their overall shape is dictated by the
tapering shape of a section of tusk, and their features, physiques and costumes
are worked with marvelous detail within this limitation.
Certainly, the pieces bear distinct family resemblances within the different
ranks, though their sizes vary, depending on the size of the original piece of
tusk. Kings—some bearded, some not, all with long plaited hair under their
crowns—sit on their elaborately carved thrones, swords in their laps. Their
cloaks are meticulously detailed to show the right arm free to wield that sword.
Queens, their veils falling from beneath their crowns, are carved to show their
position as regal advisers. Though their right hands seem to be slapping their
cheeks in consternation, the gesture was meant to signify thoughtful
deliberation.
To carve a queen's fully rounded right arm required consummate skill to drill
through the ivory, shape the limb and finally polish it in the round without
fracturing it. Similar pierce-work distinguishes the bishops, each of whom holds
a crozier, the hooked staff of episcopal office.
Kings, queens and bishops are all enthroned, and the exquisite scrollwork
carved on the backs of each throne "recalls the marginalia of a manuscript" Mr.
Robinson says. This intricate, sinuous visual language was an essential part of
Northern European Medieval art, linking these chessmen to Romanesque and early
Gothic stone carving and illuminations of the Book of Kells.

Warder.
The Trustees of the British Museum

The helmeted knights break most vigorously from the conical form, each,
replete with shield, sword and suit of mail, seated astride a sturdy little
pony. The warders or rooks are carved as bearded, helmeted foot soldiers (castle
shapes came later) with shields and swords adding to their fierceness. But
several of them, called "Berserkers," are particularly fierce, their bared teeth
literally chomping on their shields in their lust for battle. This frenzy was
called beserksgangr in Norse and gave us the word "berserk."
Finally the most abstract of all the chessmen, the little pawns, each worked
from a tiny bullet-shaped tip of a tusk and carved only with a series of facets,
or with incised flat sides, instead of human features.
Superficially, the bulging eyes of those chessmen with faces lend them a
comically lunatic stare. But as you compare these pieces, each reveals
nuances—facial features, gestures and postures—that the master ivory carvers
achieved within the limitations imposed by the walrus tusk. For example, one of
the warders is carved with his face and even his eyes turned slightly off to the
side in apparent thought. It is this essential humanity of the unknown carver's
hand that reaches across to us over the centuries. Viewed this way, we can
understand Mr. Robinson's comment that "these Lewis Chessmen are my Elgin
Marbles."

—Mr. Scherer writes about classical music and
the fine arts for the Journal.

In the growing rivalry between the emerging superpowers China and India, Beijing scored a symbolic victory on Thursday: a Chinese woman won a chess match.

The woman, Hou Yifan, 17, easily retained the Women’s World Chess Championship title when she drew the eighth game of a match against Humpy Koneru, the best Indian woman to play the game.
The final score of the best-of-10 match was 5.5 points to 2.5 points.

Despite the lopsided score, the victory was not as easy as it appeared, Ms. Hou said in a telephone interview from Tirana, Albania, where the match was held. “Every game was interesting. Both of us had chances,” she said. The difference was that “in the middle games, I caught her mistakes.”

Ms. Koneru said she was disappointed but not entirely surprised. “I’ve been struggling for the last year with my game,” she said by telephone, adding that her mistakes were caused by a lack of patience at critical points when she played too aggressively.

CHENNAI: The Tirana experience must be hurting Koneru Humpy a
lot. A 5.5-2.5 win for defending champion Hou Yifan of China
after the eighth-game draw on Thursday night meant that this match was one of
the most one-sided in women's World
chess championship history, highlighting the mental state of the Indian more
than her preparation.

Realistically, Humpy is not inferior to Yifan,
though her scores in the 10-game Tirana championship and also her past score
against the Chinese would weigh against her strength. In fact, Humpy was
stronger in rating when they started the match, though the 17-year-old Chinese
was still the champion.

Maybe, the Indian did not have the kind of run
up to the longest battle that she waged against anyone in her career. The
10-game format came back to women's chess title match after a long time but this
cannot be a reason for failure because Yifan had the same experience.

Perhaps, the Chinese was less experienced in top-flight chess compared
to Humpy. "Better and tougher preparation earlier in the year, huge backing from
the Chinese Chess Federation, a huge plus score against Koneru, two match wins
in the FIDE KO (knockout) format against Koneru, youth and I believe superior
talent all on her side all suggested to me that this would happen," noted Mark
Crowther in his analysis of Yifan's triumph.

Among the factors Crowther
mentioned, the backing of the Chinese
Chess Federation is striking because by now it is obvious to the world that
Humpy has not enjoyed the best of support from All India Chess Federation. It is
difficult to conclude that either Humpy or AICF is to blame in the cold war but
Hou Yifan was certainly in a better position in that respect as any Chinese
player is given the way chess is run in that country.

Perhaps, the
decisive factor that swung the match in Yifan's favour was that the Indian had a
huge mental lag againt Yifan, who had scored two wins in shorter matches against
her in the same championship in the last three years. Humpy was slightly better
in games 1,2 and 8 but still she could not take it beyod the opening level.

"In the first two games she got the position she wanted (out of the
opening), but she could not get much," said GM Abhijit Kunte. "Though Yifan was
taken out of the book, she coud find over-the-board solutions." Kunte does not
think that this is the end of the world for the Indian. "In fact, Humpy is more
experienced and the difference between them is not much as the score would
indicate," he added. Humpy is only in her mid-20s and this match would certainly
help her in the battles to come.

The beautifully preserved leather trappings of an ancient Egyptian chariot have been rediscovered in a storeroom of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Researchers say that the find, which includes intact harnesses, gauntlets and a bow case, is unique, and will help them to reconstruct how such chariots were made and used.

A painted box from Tutankhamun's tomb depicts the Pharaoh on a chariot chasing Nubians.

Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic/Getty Images

The ancient Egyptians used chariots — typically with one or two riders and pulled by two horses — for hunting and warfare as well as in processions. They are frequently shown in ancient Egyptian art, and several examples of the wooden frames survive, including six dismantled chariots found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, dating to around 3,300 years ago.

But researchers knew little about the leather trappings and harnesses used with such chariots, as leather decomposes quickly if any moisture is present. Barely any leather survives on the chariots from Tutankhamun’s tomb, though some fragments are known from chariots found in other tombs, such as that of Yuya and Thuya, Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents.

Accidental treasures
Then in 2008, André Veldmeijer of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, who specializes in the study of ancient leather, saw a black-and-white photograph of some intact chariot trappings in a 1950s book on ancient technology1.

They were labelled as being held in the Egyptian Museum, but when Veldmeijer asked the curator, Ibrahim El Gawad, he knew nothing about them. But a few months later, El Gawad came across the trappings by accident, lying forgotten in a series of drawers in a back room of the museum.

Veldmejier says that El Gawad called him to the museum and showed him “layer upon layer” of leather. “It’s a gorgeous find,” he says. “What was in the picture, that’s not even half of what’s in the museum. It was astonishing.”

The trappings are 90–95% complete, according to Veldmeijer, and include the leather casing that would have covered the wooden chariot, as well as harnesses, gauntlets, and a bow case and quiver. Wear marks and details of the stitching are still visible, and the intricate red, green and white design — the only known example of its type — is still bright after more than three millennia.

Chariot ride

Veldmeijer is now working with Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, to conserve, catalogue and study the trappings as part of the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project. That includes attempting to open out the fragile pieces — which had been folded to fit into the museum drawers — and protecting them with acid-free packing material. They will report their first results at a dedicated conference to be held in Cairo next year.

“The trappings should help us to understand more about chariot construction and use, which in turn will be important for our knowledge of ancient Egyptian warfare and elite display,” says Susanna Harris, an expert in ancient textiles and animal skins at University College London. She adds that the results may also have implications for the study of chariots in other societies for which there are no surviving examples. “For example there are chariots in the wall paintings and iconography of Crete (Minoans) and mainland Greece (Mycenaeans) dating to this period but no preserved chariot leather there,” she says.

The Egyptian Museum project is in its early stages but the researchers are already gaining new insights into how the chariot was used. For example, Ikram has identified a leather strap that she thinks acted as a safety belt. “It would have fitted around the driver’s bum to stabilize him, and to stop him from falling out,” she says.

Veldmeijer also hopes to identify the type of leather used, as well as studying the stitching and skin-processing methods and how the leather was cut and assembled.

One mystery yet to be solved is where the chariot trappings come from originally. Museum records state that they were bought from a Greek antiquities dealer called Georges Tano in 1932, but it isn’t known where he found them. To have survived in such good condition they were presumably discovered in a tomb, and the style suggest a time around that of Tutankhamun. [The fact that we don't know and probably won't ever know clouds our knowledge. This is the type of destruction of history that is the legacy of antiquities looters and smugglers.]

El Gawad thinks that they belonged to Tutankhamun's father, the rebel pharaoh Akhenaten, but Veldmeijer believes them to date from slightly later, possibly belonging to one of Tutankhamun’s successors.

BIRMINGHAM.- Archaeologists led by the University of
Birmingham with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological
Prospection have discovered evidence of two huge pits positioned on celestial
alignment at Stonehenge. Shedding new light on the significant association of
the monument with the sun, these pits may have contained tall stones, wooden
posts or even fires to mark its rising and setting and could have defined a
processional route used by agriculturalists to celebrate the passage of the sun
across the sky at the summer solstice.

Positioned within the Cursus
pathway, the pits are on alignment towards midsummer sunrise and sunset when
viewed from the Heel Stone, the enigmatic stone standing just outside the
entrance to Stonehenge. For the first time, this discovery may directly link the
rituals and celestial phenomena at Stonehenge to activities within the Cursus.

The international archaeological survey team, led by the University of
Birmingham’s IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA), with the Ludwig
Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in
Vienna (LBI ArchPro) have also discovered a previously unknown gap in the middle
of the northern side of the Cursus, which may have provided the main entrance
and exit point for processions that took place within the pathway. Stretching
from west to east, the Cursus is an immense linear enclosure, 100 metres wide
and two and a half kilometres across, north of Stonehenge.

Professor
Vince Gaffney, archaeologist and project leader from the IBM Visual and Spatial
Technology Centre at the University of Birmingham, explains: “This is the first
time we have seen anything quite like this at Stonehenge and it provides a more
sophisticated insight into how rituals may have taken place within the Cursus
and the wider landscape. These exciting finds indicate that even though
Stonehenge was ultimately the most important monument in the landscape, it may
at times not have been the only, or most important, ritual focus and the area of
Stonehenge may have become significant as a sacred site at a much earlier date.

“Other activities were carried out at other ceremonial sites only a
short distance away. The results from this new survey help us to appreciate just
how complex these activities were and how intimate these societies were with the
natural world. The perimeter of the Cursus may well have defined a route guiding
ceremonial processions which took place on the longest day of the year.”

Archaeologists have understood for a long time that Stonehenge was
designed to mark astronomical events, built by farming societies whose everyday
concerns with growing crops linked their daily lives to the passage of the
seasons and in particular the sun, on which their livelihoods depended. This new
evidence raises exciting questions about how complex rituals within the
Stonehenge landscape were conducted and how processions along or around the
Cursus were organised at the time Stonehenge was in use.

Professor
Gaffney adds: “It now seems likely that other ceremonial monuments in the
surrounding landscape were directly articulated with rituals at Stonehenge. It
is possible that processions within the Cursus moved from the eastern pit at
sunrise, continuing eastwards along the Cursus and, following the path of the
sun overhead, and perhaps back to the west, reaching the western pit at sunset
to mark the longest day of the year. Observers of the ceremony would have been
positioned at the Heel Stone, of which the two pits are aligned.”

Dr
Henry Chapman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Visualisation observes: “If
you measure the walking distance between the two pits, the procession would
reach exactly half-way at midday, when the sun would be directly on top of
Stonehenge. This is more than just a coincidence, indicating that the exact
length of the Cursus and the positioning of the pits are of significance.”

Stonehenge, while certainly the most important monument in the later
Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape, was surrounded by a dense concentration of
other sacred sites, some of which were already ancient when Stonehenge itself
was built. The team has also revealed a new horseshoe arrangement of large pits
north-east of Stonehenge which may have also contained posts and, together with
the henge-like monument discovered last year and a number of other small
monuments, may have functioned as minor shrines, perhaps serving specific
communities visiting the ceremonial centre.

Paul Garwood, Lecturer in
Prehistory at the University of Birmingham, comments: “Our knowledge of the
ancient landscapes that once existed around Stonehenge is growing dramatically
as we examine the new geophysical survey results. We can see in rich detail not
only new monuments, but entire landscapes of past human activity, over thousands
of years, preserved in sub-surface features such as pits and ditches. This
project is establishing a completely new framework for studying the Stonehenge
landscape.”

These new discoveries have come to light as part of the
Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, which began in summer 2010 as the world’s
biggest-ever virtual excavation using the latest geophysical imaging techniques
to reveal and visually recreate the extraordinary prehistoric landscape
surrounding Stonehenge.

Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, Director of the
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, adds: “The LBI provides the best academics,
technicians and young researchers in a team of 20 people and uses multiple
systems designed for use on projects where the scale of work was previously
unachievable. The use of non-invasive technologies provides information for
virtual archaeologies that can be disseminated to the public via the web, iPad
or mobile phone.”

Dr Christopher Gaffney, lecturer in Archaeological
Geophysics at the University of Bradford, concludes:

“Building on our
work from last year we have added even more techniques and instruments to study
this remarkable landscape. It is clear that one technique is not adequate to
study the complexity of the monuments and landscape surrounding our most
important archaeological monument and the battery of techniques used here has
significantly increased the certainty of our interpretation.”

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"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...